It's been said on this show before; XR doesn't have a technology problem, it has an adoption problem. In Dan Lejerskar's experience, everyone from universities to governments see the value of XR -- they just lack the content to make it a worthwhile, everyday tool. He and Alan explore how EON Reality is addressing this discrepancy. 

Alan: Hi, it's Alan Smithson

here. Today we're speaking with Dan Lejeskar, founder and chairman of

EON Reality, a world leader in

virtual/augmented reality based knowledge transfer for industry and

education. They believe that knowledge is a human right and it's

their goal to make knowledge available, affordable, and accessible

for every human on the planet. We're going to find out how, in the

next XR for Business Podcast. Dan, welcome to the show, my friend.

Dan: Thank you so much.

Alan: I'm really, really

excited. I know you guys have been working-- well, you specifically

have been working in the 3D virtual space for many years now. How did

you get involved in VR and learning?

Dan: In my past, I used to work

with simulators -- big aircraft simulators, etc. -- and I got really

excited about seeing the effect it has on pilots and soldiers, and I

always thought that it would be useful to do the same, but for normal

people, nurses, etc. But obviously these people couldn't afford a

$50-million simulator. So I had to be patient and wait until the

computers follow Moore's Law; become cheaper, faster, better. And by

'99, the hardware was there, so you can start running this on PCs. So

we were very early adopters of virtual reality already in that

period.

Alan: We're talking 20 years.

Most people know VR and AR as if kind of something in the last five

years. But what was it like kind of going through these growing pains

of going from a million dollar simulator -- millions of dollars

simulator -- to now we can buy an Oculus Quest for 500 bucks?

Dan: It's been an interesting

journey, with a lot of ups and downs. And very much VR has been like

AI. I'm sure you've read about the "AI Winter", when things

didn't go that well. We've had quite a few ups and downs in virtual

reality. '99 was fantastic, because that was the era of dot-coms. And

we started with something called Web3D, so you can do 3D on the web.

It had actually millions of users. Then we had a hard landing 2001.

Remember when dot-com crashed? And we had to move our business from

industry and education to defence because we had September 11th. So

that was kind of what saved our business, doing homeland security

centers and the like. And then slowly and surely, we picked up the

business up to 2007, 2008. And during this period, there were several

iterations. There was something called people avatars and virtual

worlds, that was very popular around 2007. That raised and crashed

also, pretty tough. But we managed to navigate those water until I

would say 2011, 2012, when the hardware became available for mobile

devices. So this was before Oculus. Already then we could see where

the industry was going.

Alan: Oh, you guys, you never

lost your path. You've veered a little bit from military, to industry

and education, back to military, and then back to industry and

education. Obviously, the passion is in the industry, knowledge

transfer and education. What are some of the projects that you guys

have done in the last few years that really just made you go, "Wow,

this really is something that, quote unquote, normal people can use?"

Dan: So, you're right. We

realized quickly that the biggest value has to do with knowledge

transfer. And we started thinking how can this technology be used to

solve big problems? And we identified three areas. One is government.

We have an initiative that I'm happ